Train tours of 5 dazzling European cities

A century after the original golden age of the railway, the trains once again become a story of travel. In Europe, train travel, in particular, has surged as an environmental alternative to short-distance flights, thanks to night trains, highway routes and cross-border collaborations between railroad companies. Political relations between European countries may be unstable, but cities are more linked than ever.

The train also brings us back to the romance of travel. Sedation times invite reading and contemplation, as the landscape reveals the geography between destinations. It's Zen, the opposite of the scattered boredom of an airplane.

I travel to Sweden every year from my home in Florence, Italy. To find the modern culture of other cities and reduce flights, I devised an Odyssey for trains from the southern Mediterranean to northern Scandinavia. Is it possible that travel with so many providers and legs actually works? I used a mound of railway sites to book a two-week itinerary for a high-speed train from Milan to Stockholm. We managed to cut off to Zurich, Berlin and Copenhagen.

Advice Words: Book a month or two in advance to get the best price. See if Eurail or Interrail Pass benefits you. Pack your meals – Food service on these routes is uneven and scary industrial when available.

Rather than sightseeing through the checklist, I was ready to cross the continent with tips from a local friend.

Milan

Milan has created its status as a vibrant city. An international flight hub, it is a convenient starting point for travelers arriving from overseas.

My first destination was the Prada Foundation. Its contemporary exhibition gives the city a measure of cool and cultural relevance. Heading towards Corso Venice, we renaded parks and surrounding streets filled with wild experiments in 20th century architecture, then visited the Luigi Rovati Foundation, featuring ancient and modern art of the 19th century Palazzo Etruscan art, modernly created by architect Mario Kincinella.

In the evening, a friend joined us. This is a longtime neighbourhood north of Loreto. After being a wine bar with aperitivos from Latte Fatal, occasionally small concerts and exhibits, we arrived at Sulming Piazza Morbeño, where we had dined at Silvano, which has been packed since opening last year. “My dream was not a Michelin star, but a place with happy clients,” chef Vladimirol Poma said of “gain food for everyone,” sharing plates like peanuts and coriander and stewed chili peppers.

While I crash with a friend's, travelers might try the new Casa Brivio Hotel (from 300 euros, or around $315) in a pair of residential buildings with mid-century-inspired suites by architect Matteo Tun.

Starting from Centre Station, I always grabbed me both with both awe and rage, with Art Deco and rationalist architecture, rising halls and Roman style mosaics, huge scales of its fascist era, indiscriminately smeared ads and LED screens. I went on the line in Zurich.

On a Swiss train (3.5 hours, 34 Swiss Francs, or about $38 tickets), I saw the soft slopes of Italy give way to the face of the lumpy cliffs in Switzerland. The waterfall explodes from the rocks, with snowy alpine peaks covered by clouds towering over wildflower meadows and black and white cow valleys. Fantasy landscape.

A short walk from the station, I dropped my luggage at Locke Am Platz (from 150 Francs), which last year opened in apartment-style rooms inspired by Swiss design.

For a few days I wandered around from Nude, a riverside cafe at Tanzaus' brutal headquarters. A beer factory converted to an art space at the Löwenbräukunst Art Center. At Joseph Wease Park with the Petanque crowd and the Alpine Chalet Bar.

From the Bürkliplatz flea market, I meandered into a gallery along the Lemistras before reaching the largest museum in Switzerland since in 2020, doubling the space with David Chipperfield's elegant concrete block monolith. Inside, Impressionist paintings in the Permanent Collection were asked in viewer surveys:

Zurich is built on the shore of a lake that is easy to swim, and the streets in the picture book are in the background with saw mountains. However, Rote Fabrik has a shift in atmosphere to a factory that has become a crude center for another culture where a new generation packs concerts, parties and drug shows into the calendar. In a graffiti-covered courtyard, DJS blasted house music during the rave of the day I attended. There are also prosperous and unruly flipsides for all of Zurich's predictable order.

Beyond the lake, the Le Corbusier Pavilion, a museum that converted to a radical 1967 home, stood like a huge stack of rainbow toy blocks. Aboard the ferry and jumped down to the centre, I stopped by Hiswine, an unpretentious natural wine bar that serves small plates and unique pickled vegetables. Back at my hotel, I sat on the balcony and marveled at the satisfaction of the city.

Berlin

The German Baan train I boarded was bed-ruggled (from 70 euros) but the views of the trip made up for it with corn fields and vineyard hills, moving onto the flats before the shock of Frankfurt skyscrapers. We stagnated for an hour outside of Berlin, and the longest legs of my journey stretched to over nine hours, so I broke the basic rule of avoiding train snacks with artificial oak and red wine tastings of despair.

A 15-minute subway ride from the station, Hoxton Hotel (from 100 euros), opened last summer and was hoping to become a hot spot for Charlottenburg, covered in straits. The pastel charms at the accommodation seemed to work. I spyed on musician Devendra Banhart for breakfast.

I rode my bike around Prenzlauerberg with a friend who reminded me of my neighborhood until the recent era of yoga and ceramic studios, when it was full of war-covered coal-heated squats. I saw the evening come back to life at neukölln from the seats in the shaking windows of a new wine bar, and found a love of food in satutu, where imaginative Berlin has a Sri Lankan flavour.

Berlin is a muscular city with its spectacular postwar boulevards and architecture on the east and west sides of Pharaon. At Kulturforum, a monumental plaza from the 1950s, I meandered from one museum to the next. Saturday performance with the National Galleryville in Mies van der Roge, an old old cinema organ, a museum of airy instruments, a gem of the Great Masters.

For the incredible scale of Berlin, the city's tree-lined paths and canals provided relief to groups of local people: gospunks, regular punks, barefoot neo-hippies, eccentrics – citizens who not only casually penetrate the weeds, but also unfit for hard medicine and one plainair sex acts.

Even with the rents rising, Libertin's spirit seemed unstable.

Copenhagen

From Berlin, a nearly eight-hour journey (60 euros) passed through the town of A-Frame House in the German town of CookieCutter, but when I woke up from a nap on the large armchair on a train, the view turned into a sheared, golden wheat swelled field surrounded by wild flowers.

In Copenhagen, the rain came down at a heavy diagonal, but the bike lane was busy as cyclists in Christian-colored parka cruised by children protruding from Christiania's cargo boxes. With apartments of centuries of brick and bright paint, the well-preserved city was creaking clean.

I headed to Cisternerne, where the groundwater reservoir with an open pool transformed into an unusual art space. In the almost dark darkness, I crossed the gangway over the waters of the waters of the waters of Tallinn Simon, wrapped in a soundpiece like Darge, and was smashed over Tallinn Simon's. Appearing on a rain cloud farewell, I rode my bike and stopped by the gardens of Rosenborg Castle, then local favorites like the vintage shop Norlebro district and Wine Bar Poppet. Even the smallest streets had bike lanes.

The next day was the inauguration of the Riviera, the third cafe of the talented Baker Chiara Barra. We devoured buttered sourdough bread and apricot ricotta cake in a corner restaurant with a spare design by Copenhagen's own Furama. “People are doing well in Copenhagen,” Bara said.

I took a dazzlingly fast subway to Amerger Island and left the centre for Josephine's Apaitivo, a circus-colored wine bar. After that, I left to the brand new Hotel Vera Grande.

Stockholm

After leaving the castle-like station in Copenhagen, a train (from 35 euros to 5.3 hours) crossed the five-mile bridge connecting Denmark and Sweden. The birds descended from the swamp followed the train across the border formed by the waters of the Olezund Strait.

From the ruined windows, from the merciless but merciless quiet train cars, I saw the shows that passed: Falred Farmhouse, meadows of cows and horses, sparkling strips of the lake. Before the train glided through the mouth of the Baltic Sea to the islands that form Stockholm, I found rabbits and deer in thin white meat and spruce pine.

I walked to Östermalm for the cinnamon morning bread of the Storabagueriette, inside a 17th-century industrial building that houses the Swedish Museum of Performing Arts. At nearby Naibrovyken, the bay where boats depart for the archipelago, we chose to ferries to the museums that once were royal hunting grounds and the forest island of Jurgarden, visiting contemporary art exhibitions and new halls of raw concrete, and visiting the fresh new halls of Lilieverch. Skeppsholmen.

One evening I stopped by Brutalisten, where I spotted the artist and owner, Kirsten Heller, dined at the window table and sampled a multi-mushroom formulation. Another night my friend and I were on the corner of Främmat, a natural French wine restaurant in a dimly lit, cozy basement in Vasastan. “In Stockholm, we're obsessed with understanding what's next and what's cool,” said one of my tablemates.

I wanted to stay at Södermalm in Babybjörns at the father's folding bar, young creative, father's troops, so I found a room at Hotel Frantz (from 140 euros), where the Antique Inn, originally built in 1647, became a guesthouse of design.

Across the street, I took the elevator to a renovated Gondren. The 1935 cocktail lounge was built 11 stories above the Sodermalm waterfront, offering views of Stockholm's harbor and Swedish Grace architecture. I was going to check out some spots, and I met a friend in a modest Burninja, but never left. The wine, music and gentle atmosphere calmed us down until closing time.

My trip ended with a departure from Arlanda Airport at 5am. I was handed over to something convenient and the discomfort of a closed budget air travel headed towards Italy. But even in the zombie states in flight mode, I was dreaming about the almost seamless train odyssey, the scenery I saw and the lighting city I had not said.